Honestly think we’ve got to a point where there’s no need to or no moral excuse for illegally sharing music, and to a lesser extent even just downloading it, and i say that as someone who used to prolifically download.
I still don’t ‘buy’ music, but whilst the streaming services obviously don’t financially support artists enough it seems a more than fair middle ground from the listener’s point of view. Still probably selfish, but y’know, not highly illegal and completely unecessary. I genuinely can’t remember the last time i didn’t have access to music or couldn’t instantly listen to any track i wanted to.
Not only that, but i’d say that since i got over the weird, almost obsessive need/want to own everything good i’d ever listened to i enjoy music more, dipping between genres and decades and forgetting about artists and rediscovering them again, etc, rather than endlessly re-listening to and trying to perfect what was probably quite a narrow collection of music.
Also, we can all sit at home smoking doobies and pretending we’re sticking it to the man by not lining the pockets of the majors, but when everyone’s doing that so some fat geek in Belarus can sleep on a pile of money somewhere due to selling advertising on the back of it that’s patently not the answer.
Weirdly, i have a completely different set of ethics when it comes to films.
